This is Good Friday. The age-old question remains ever relevant. What is so good about this day? At least in the eyes of Christians it remains a truly relevant question which challenges our understanding and appreciation of what happened on that day on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem over two thousand years ago. The beautifully poignant song which is a favorite of many people all over the world, asks the question, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” *1 Today, I want you to imagine being there as difficult as it might be to do so. Just see yourself right there perhaps ten or twenty feet from the cross looking straight up at the man hanging there. Of course, there are two other persons hanging on their own crosses, but for this moment, you are drawn to the presence of only one, a man with a cross of thorns pierced through his head, looking down at you from his cross.
As you look, you immediately are drawn to and are horrified by the bloodied and broken body on the cross. Sweat and blood are pouring from his face, his back and every part of his body that was so brutally scourged a day earlier. Yet he seems dignified. He is not screaming. He is not cursing. He is not writhing in pain or making any attempt to escape. He is at peace. It is as if you are seeing someone who despite being in obvious pain is satisfied that he has finished what he had set out to do. This is our Lord! What you are looking at is a battered and weary body perhaps even swollen all over from the bruises and cuts and torn flesh from the crown of thorns and the scourging he had received only a day earlier. Yet he seems at peace.
This harks back to Isaiah’s prophecy so many centuries earlier about the uncomeliness of the servant of the Lord who would be so physically disfigured that we would not want to have anything to do with him. The message of Isaiah about this suffering servant actually begins in chapter fifty-two and verse thirteen (Isaiah 52:13) of the book of Isaiah and it is very clear that Isaiah is describing someone who would be so physically abused that no one would want to associate with him yet this physically unattractive person would be the one who would be God’s instrument of human redemption.
As we read Isaiah, the picture is clear. This is a ghastly looking person. Who will take such a person seriously? Yet this is just the person who is deemed to be God’s agent of his glory in the world. Most Christian scholars believe that this is a Messianic passage because Jesus was precisely the person who is being described in Isaiah’s passage. Isaiah was prophesying about the degrading and humiliating experience that God’s own son would have to undergo to save humanity. What a stark contradiction in the expectation of the Messiah and reality of his earthly life?
So then, when we look at the cross, at this disfigured and battered figure, the message of Good Friday certainly does not look very “Good” at all. But the real reason for it being “Good” is not what happens to the disfigured person on the cross or even how he looks. The message is all about what he has done for us by humbling himself to such a sorry state. What is “good” is what we have benefitted from in his disdain and his suffering. Calvary was “Good” for us, not for him in a physical sense. The real message of Isaiah’s prophecy is that God never acts in ways that humans expect or even desire. The Messiah was expected to be a king or someone of royal birth or high esteem at the very least. Someone who could command attention physically and perhaps command an army too. Yet the Savior of the world was a poor carpenter who described himself as having no place to lay his head. (See St. Luke 9:59) The message behind Isaiah’s prophecy and exemplified in the life of Jesus is that God uses the unexpected and the unregarded to bear his message and to carry out his purpose in the world. It is the person that we least expect or the situation that we least desire that is the very realization of God’s will and purpose in the world.
As we continue to imagine ourselves at the foot of the cross looking into the eyes of the One who came as Savior of the world, there is one question that I would like us all to reflect on. Who do you see dying on that cross? Is this revolting and sad picture of a dying man one that you can accept as your Lord and Savior? Do you see in this man, despite the horrible scene, the glorified Son of God who in this moment on the cross has not lost the battle to his enemies but instead is on the way to conquering his enemies and death itself? The image of the person who you are seeing on the cross should determine your response as you leave Golgotha and return to your daily living. Let us now move from that scene at Calvary or Golgotha and come back to this moment, right here in church today or wherever you are on this Good Friday day. The question is still the same. Which image of Christ spurs you to worship today? Is it the battered and bruised son of God or the one of Christ as conqueror of death and hell itself? We cannot recognise or appreciate the meaning of the Good Friday event without seeing in it the power of death. Someone did die on that day over two thousand years ago. Death has its purpose and its own place in human experience. Its ultimate purpose is to bring us closer to our Saviour and God. But death is also fleeting. It does not have a long term hold on us. That is what Jesus’ death was meant to show us all. Death’s grasp was temporary as we look forward to overcoming its power through Jesus. We all look forward to the resurrection, the ultimate proof of death’s failure to hold us down. and to separate us from our Savior and God.
As you leave here today contemplating the image of Christ that speaks to your heart most effectively and spurs your own response to his sacrifice on Calvary, we must also contemplate those things in our own lives that we should nail to that cross as well. What attitudes and behaviours in our lives should we really let go of so that we can have the opportunity to rise as new beings cleansed by the power of the risen Lord? Is it greed? Is it selfishness? Is it prejudice? Is it anger?
What ailments or persistent situations would you like to leave at the cross today? Is it an unhealthy habit? Is it ill health? Is it persistent financial problems? Is it low self-esteem? Is it constant family concerns? Whatever is making you less of who God wants you to be you, can lay them at the foot of the cross today and prepare to rise as new beings, renewed and restored by the power of the glorified and resurrected Saviour. He who has conquered death and with it all that the world throws at us from day to day, is ready to give you new life. Remember his own words to those disciples two thousand years ago and take those words as yours today when he says, “ In the world you face persecution. But take courage. I have overcome the world.” (St. John 16:33 NIV) Let this give you hope and assurance as you continue to reflect on the image of our dying Saviour which resonates with you today. Amen.
